The Impact of Scale on Children’s Spatial Thought: A Quantitative Study for Two Settings in Geometry Education

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Authors

In this book, Cathleen Heil addresses the question of how to conceptually understand children’s spatial thought in the context of geometry education. She proposes that in order to help children develop their abilities to successfully grasp and manipulate the spatial relations they experience in their everyday lives, spatial thought should not only be addressed in written or tabletop settings at school. Instead, geometry education should also focus on settings involving real space, such as during reasoning with maps.

In a first part of this book, she theoretically addresses the construct of spatial thought at different scales of space from a cognitive psychological point of view and shows that maps can be rich sources for spatial thinking. In a second part, she proposes how to measure children’s spatial thought in a paper-and-pencil setting and map-based setting in real space. In a third, empirical part, she examines the relations between children’s spatial thought in those two settings both at a manifest and latent level.
Original languageEnglish
Place of PublicationWiesbaden
PublisherSpringer
Edition1
Number of pages462
ISBN (print)978-3-658-32647-0
ISBN (electronic)978-3-658-32648-7
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2020

Publication series

NameStudien zur theoretischen und empirischen Forschung in der Mathematikdidaktik
PublisherSpringer
ISSN (Print)2523-8604
ISSN (electronic)2523-8612

Bibliographical note

Zugl. Dissertation der Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, 2020

    Research areas

  • Didactics of Mathematics - spatial abilities, map reading, structural equation modeling, Primary education, mathematics education